Why Success Is Built Upon Each Daily Habit

 

 

Everyone has a daily ritual, whether they realize it or not. For most of us, our daily rituals contain a mixture of good habits and bad habits.

If we want to improve our lives, we must find ways to gradually replace more of those bad habits with healthier ones.

by Dane Findley

How Long Does It Take to Form a New Habit?

Setting new, good habits is easier said than done, because once we have a bad habit “set,” it can be very difficult to break that momentum and go in a different direction! Recent research has revealed that it takes about 66 days to set a new habit.

But as hard as it may be to change our habits, we feel so much better when we do. Eating a pint of ice cream in front of the television each night might be fun and relaxing in the moment, but over time it will absolutely erode our bodies and our self-esteem.

And so we strive to improve, because we want our lives to be joy-filled and meaningful. Each of us wants to realize our fullest potential as a human being — to have healthy bodies that hum with energy and clarity — and somewhere deep inside we know we have to take an honest look at our daily habits in order to become our best.

Daily Good Habits Lead to Realized Goals

The formula seems simple: more good habits, less bad ones. What makes a daily habit “good” is that it aligns us toward the life we most want to live.

But we know it isn’t always so simple. We know a new, positive habit won’t “set itself.” We know these things don’t just “happen” on their own. We know we need a plan.

Most people find it helpful to set goals. The reason that they find goal-setting helpful is because… {drumroll, please}… goals work!

It’s a self-perpetuating loop: When we improve our daily habits, we achieve our goals. When we achieve our goals, we receive the immeasurable benefit of having improved our daily habits.

How to Set Goals

A different — and outrageously effective — way to set goals is to determine what you want, then work backwards until you drill it down to a daily habit.

Let’s craft an example of what I mean by this process:

Hypothetically, if your goal is, say, to “have a tight waist” then you work backward to identify habits that, when stacked, will lead cumulatively to a tight waist — such as “go for a walk around the block each night after dinner” and “turn the television off at 8:30pm each night (to reduce temptation for late-night desserts).”

When you look back on an old list of goals you wrote, the chances are that you will see that many of your goals have since been realized — even though you forgot to think about your goal list every day and, in fact, forgot that you even made the list in the first place!

This is because whatever you spend your energy, time, and focus on: you get more of. This is a natural law at play in the universe. When you identify a solution with your conscious mind, your unconscious mind will set to work on solving the problem.

The more clarity and conviction you have about your goal — the more feeling you have behind it — the harder your unconscious will work on your behalf. The more ambivalent you are about the solution, the less hard your unconscious will work. When you’re ambivalent, so is the universe. When you get serious about the universe, the universe gets serious abou you.

“…how often does a new habit need to be performed
before it no longer requires herculean self-control?
When we want to develop a relatively simple habit
like eating a piece of fruit each day or taking a 10-minute walk,
it could take us over two months of daily repetitions before the behavior becomes a habit”                                                                   ~ PsyBlog

When you carefully and passionately create a list of new goals, you are engaging your unconscious. And, let’s face it, daily habits mostly come from a very unconscious place. When we do something almost as if on autopilot — as if our muscles have memorized the particular activity — then we can say that activity has been habituated.

The very process of crafting a goal list causes you to visualize the goals as having been attained already — and this places positive images into your psyche. And your unconscious loves images even more than words!

 

What Is a New Years Resolution?

The annual phenomena of New Years Resolutions means that, sometime between December 26th (the day after Christmas) and January 1st (New Years Day), millions of human beings over the planet take the opportunity to reflect on their lives — to celebrate their successes, to feel grateful for abundance, and to focus on what else it is that they want from their lives, and from themselves.

“…everyone has a daily ritual, whether they realize it or not.
The trick to increased success in life, is to periodically look at your daily ritual with objectivity,
as if you’re watching how someone else spends their time
and studying those habits so you can fine-tune them”

Now is the Perfect Time to Evaluate Your Habits

Of course, you don’t need a holiday in order to update your list of new goals! You can do it any time that you want to, and needn’t be constrained by dates.

It turns out that I have a slightly different view on setting goals. I believe a very wise place to start your goal-setting process, is by looking at your daily rituals, and determining what specific habits need changing.

Each good daily habit is a helping hand that steadies your bow, so that you can stay on target with your goals.

Do you have a ritual? Of course, you do. Everyone does. You eat every day. You brush your teeth every day. You do all kinds of things every day.

Everyone who is reading this will benefit greatly by updating their life strategy. And for those of you who have never before crafted a life strategy (gasp!), it’s even more essential. And, for those of you who reading this who also happen to be over the age of 40, it’s outrageously important to create a strategy for the next 50 years of your life. So that you can become increasingly healthy and energized, and enjoy a higher quality of life with each passing year.

Over the last 200 years our environment has changed tremendously (and, really, that’s an understatement). But — and it’s a big but — our human physiology remains comparatively unaltered, so in a sense we haven’t yet physically developed the coping skills to deal with all the noise, distractions, and craziness.

The problem with the rat race is that it has a tendency to be detrimental to our physical health and to our relationships. This is especially true for those of us over the age of 40. In a sense, everyone in the developed nations over age 40 has the same challenge: how to age successfully, gracefully, and with nobility. That is, how to enjoy increased prosperity while at the same time improving our physical health and deepening our relationships.

Anyone who has ever lost a friend or loved-one too young to cancer knows that if you keep putting your health and your relationships off until tomorrow, you will live — or die — to regret it. I realize that’s an intense thing to say, and it’s hard to say delicately, but someone has to say it: we all have the same problem. What makes it awkward is that it’s a problem few want to admit they have. Fortunately, there are solutions. In fact, I compiled solutions into a new book, The Numinous Journey — the book is just one of five items in the new Longevity Lifestyle Kit.

By utilizing principles of Success Psychology, the Longevity Lifestyle Kit ensures that your new, positive habits will “stick” (instead of having you start out with good intentions and then falling back into the same old habits).

 

“The Numinous Journey really spoke to me.
Definitely a book to read to get you to think about why and how people live their lives.
I identified with being on auto-pilot;
I already knew this but had not fully admitted why this was bad for me in the longer term.
It also made me think about how how people really engage (or fail to engage) in conversations
as well as how I can take baby steps to make my life more fulfilling”
                                            ~ Nicky Hirst, Marketing Manager

The final section of The Numinous Journey helps you to crystalize everything you’ve learned about yourself and hold dear, and then utilize this new awareness into creating a life map — a map that will help you to navigate this next phase of your life, so that your journey is passionate, joyful, and rich with meaning and purpose. This next phase of your life can be your most fascinating yet!

“…the opening chapters of The Numinous Journey are so powerful, I defy anyone truly interested in self-improvement to read no further! Compelling and wise, without thinking that you have just been put straight and told off!

Dane complements his prose with those influential in both western and eastern philosophy, providing the reader with a wonderfully balanced view — sage advice and quotes that inspire and enlighten!

Chapter 6 is so vital. In discussing our eternal desires for that which lies outside of us, Dane reinforces the ancient philosophy: ‘all that we seek is within us.’

Chapter 7 reminds us of the foolishness of waiting to live, really live, until… until what? It is a sad indictment that so many start to live only when faced with a life-limiting illness!

Chapter 8 is about finding true inner peace. Mindfulness and meditation is no dark art. All that you seek is here. Priceless!

The closing chapters are a firestorm of brilliant advice and tips to (kindly) hammer home major — yet achievable — goals that will introduce you to paradigm shifts in family life, work-life and performance. The formula for creating meaningful, positive change is here …and it makes sense!

Being a man in his late 40s, I feel so fortunate to have read The Numinous Journey. As a psychotherapist I help others to walk their emotional fires — as I also walk my own — and this book could hardly have arrived at a better time!

                                      ~ Bob Brotchie, Anglia Counselling

How Successful People Think

There are two ways to get successful.

The external way is a bombastic, take-no-prisoners approach that appears to work pretty well, except that I’ve noticed that it takes a toll on a person’s physical health and, although these people are respected, they’re respected in a there’s-a-snake-loose-in-the-barn kind of a way.

The internal way to success is to improve your thoughts so that they are more compassionate, empathic and positive, heal your relationship with money, and improve your beliefs about prosperity. These tend to be people who are strong yet kind, and invariably they end up feeling authentically known and calmly loved by the people they care most about.

I encourage you to pick up the Longevity Lifestyle Kit and experience the positive results it will have on your daily life. All five items in the kit are designed to work synchronistically.

Each items serve a specific purpose, and combined they become super powerful. Enjoy the value and savings of getting all 5 items together!

The kit includes a e-Book, an e-Guide, an e-Booklet, an e-List, and an e-Workbook. The anchor of the kit is The Numinous Journey, an eBook that utilizes principles of Success Psychology and is strategically crafted to facilitate an inner process, that will help make your exciting new lifestyle habits “stick!”

• ➊ How to Create a Strategy for Living a Fascinating Post-40 Life: The Numinous Journey
• ➋ A Unique Social Experiment: 28 Best Friends
• ➌ How to Get Seriously Organized Using Checklists: The Dane Technique
• ➍ Using Your Blender to Get Lean and Strong: 5 Best Smoothie Recipes
• ➎ Ingredients Guide for Freshly Made Green Smoothies: The Shopping List

 

 
People who become successful by changing their insides first come to realize that it’s the ordinary tasks and activities we do every day — our quotidian — that make us exactly who we are.

I suggest focusing your awareness on how you actually, typically, spend your time. Really look at it closely.

Whatever we habituate on the daily level: that’s our life.

I love that word: habituate. Within that word, is hidden the key to significant self-improvement, I believe.

Fred Rogers — television’s Mister Rogers — knew this simple but powerful concept, that habituating daily good choices is the key to thriving, and through his educational programming he helped children to integrate this valuable life-skill. Do not be deceived by the simplicity of this video; his wisdom was genius!

 
I invite your questions and comments below. It took me many years to figure out, what I’m sharing with you now — that success, happiness and health are really built from the foundation of our daily habits. Now that I know that, I give my quotidian the care and thoughtfulness it deserves, and I’m nearly always fine-tuning my routine!